Report Card

I've been asked by a friend to blog about my impressions of our president after nearly a year in office. Actually, I need to thank my conservative friends, not for their efforts to "enlighten" me about how evil President Obama is, but rather for putting into the spotlight how un-Christian my behavior towards George W. Bush. I feel rather hypocritical for emphasizing Romans 13 to my Christian conservative friends for this president, while basically ignoring that part of the Bible for the last 8 years.
I am not as enamored with the president now as much as I was when he first took office. It really is expecting too much of any person to carry through as much hope and change as he was proposing. At first the attacks on his office made me very angry, but at some point I realized he didn't need me to defend him, and friendships are more important than politics. I would suspect that the conservatives in my facebook friend list far outnumber the liberals, but if I had to choose between losing their friendship and becoming conservative, I would choose the latter. Fortunately, since they are my real friends, they would never ask me to make that choice. Perhaps an analogy would be two lawyers who beat each other up in court, and then go out for a drink afterwards. I must admit that sometimes I "hide" their status for awhile when the hate seems to overflow, but dropping them from my list of friends has never been an option.

Maybe I would make a good politician, as I've managed to fill a couple of paragraphs without really saying anything. I know it's early in his tenure, but I can honestly say I cannot think of a single thing that has happened in Washington the last year that has had a measurable impact on my life, pro or con. This puts him in the same category as nearly every president that I can remember. Probably the biggest personal impact came from GWB, for spearheading No Child Left Behind, and it was for that that he earned my antipathy. To me that was big government at its worst. I do have a conservative friend who says that Bill Clinton was actually more of a conservative than GWB, and NCLB would seem to support that statement. If I were still teaching, President Obama might actually make me angrier, in that he is a proponent of merit pay for teachers, again believing education can be measured by test scores. Following that logic, Foothill teachers deserve more than Century High School teachers because of their test scores, and there is no logic in that at all. I just don't know how merit pay would work, because all teachers have a different clientele with different abilities. It's interesting to me that President Obama was booed at the ultra-liberal NEA convention, for his stand on merit pay. Hopefully with all the other things on his plate he wont have a change to get around to that one, since I still have many family members who are public school teachers.
The biggest hot button is obviously health care. It looks like his plan will eventually go through, and far more people are talking against it than for it. To me, the argument that makes me the angriest is that people without health care don't deserve it. Conversely, those of us who do have it deserve it. That makes no sense to me. What human being doesn't deserve a chance to be healthy? The classic argument is that all of us do have health care because ERs are required to treat whether the person has insurance or not. The response to that is that many ERs are closing for that reason--they can't afford to stay open and not get paid, nor can we expect them to. So, my stance on that hasn't changed--I believe health care is a right, on the same level as police protection, fire protection, freeways, and other tax-supported institutions. I think I even believe--though I haven't thought this through, that health care is more important than a free public education. I have no problem with my taxes going up if it means health care for more people. I have already been blessed far more than I ever expected to be, and sharing is not distasteful to me. Having said that, I have no problem with those who believe the current proposed plan is not the best answer. And, the truth be told, I don't know enough about it to know if it is good or bad. Since I am now paying almost $700 a month for Jan's medical insurance, a plan that would reduce that is appealing to me.
So there are things about it I don't know. What I do know is that it is nearly impossible to get an unbiased opinion in the media, particularly with those stations who laughingly call themselves "News media." I believe to my core that any time the lips of the two most popular conservative "analysts" move, they are lying. They will say whatever they think their "public" wants to hear, and they are entertainers, period. There is as much hard news in their diatribes as there is in a Jay Leno monologue. (Decided not to use names just in case someone reports me!)
Since we are discussing lying, I cannot help but admit I am greatly disappointed in the falsehoods that have become part of the administration's "new job" figures. When BO spoke today saying that the job loss for November was the lowest since 2007, I didn't entirely believe him. It is no defense that he was just reporting numbers created by his staff. Harry Truman certainly had it right when he pointed out where the buck stops.
I have a friend (who asked for this blog) who pointed out the president's approval rating was down 7 points in the last 3 weeks. I poked him a little, saying I hoped he would report when and if the numbers spiked up. I think all of us are guilty of believing the numbers that support our point of view. Getting back to schools, if you believe public schools are failing, then you believe the comparisons of our test scores with other countries. If you believe, as I do, that teachers have never been better trained than they are today, then you will point out that America is the only country on earth that tests every student, not just those who are on the university track. Kids who "fail" the standardized tests in America at age 16 are kids that would have been weeded out of the system at age 12 in other countries. It's the same with politics. As Art Garfunkel penned almost 50 years ago, "A man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest."
As for Afghanistan, I'm not ready to support the escalation of troops. I think it's also a Catch-22 for the president. There are people, some very well-known radio hosts for example, who would actually welcome another terrorist attack on American soil, for then their predictions would be proven right. I think by unofficially declaring war on the Taliban, the president has almost guaranteed another attempt in this county. The only way he can "win" would be to destroy them without any loss of life in America. I don't see that happening, but with all my heart I hope I am wrong. Should we be there? I honestly don't know at this point. The cynic would suggest a closed door deal--"I'll vote for health care if you send more troops to the middle east." Logrolling is alive and well.
Well, there it is. You may never hear a more uninformed and baseless political opinion, but that's all I got right now. If you comment, it probably means you disagree. That's fine. I will still love you. No matter how wrong you are!